ORLANDO, Fla.—If Julius Randle ends up playing basketball at Duke, one person will deserve major credit for reeling him in—and it’s not necessarily Mike Krzyzewski. While the Blue Devils’ head coach and his staff will of course have had a good bit to do with it if Randle heads to Durham, there’s another individual who may have even more to do with it.

His name is Matt Jones, and he’s hardly an unknown quantity at Duke—so far he’s the lone member of the program’s 2013 class.

Jones may deserve the assist if he can persuade Randle, his uber-talented childhood buddy, to follow him to Duke. See, Jones and Randle have known each other since elementary school—before Coach K or any Duke basketball fan knew or cared who they were.

Both live in Texas, so of course the Texas Longhorns are also a serious threat to land Randle, as is Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, Baylor, Florida—basically every big-time school in the country is after Jones’ longtime friend.

They were both on hand for AAU national championship action in Orlando (Fla.) on Thursday, participating in pool play for their summer team—the No. 1 overall ranked AAU team, the Texas Titans. The 6-foot-9 Randle is clearly the team’s top threat and is generally considered the nation’s No. 2 overall 2013 recruit behind Chicago-area native Jabari Parker. Jones isn’t far behind—highly respected in his own right as a 6-foot-4 guard.

“I work on him a lot,” Jones told Sporting News on Thursday. “I always try to let him be him because he let me be me when I was going through my decision. But I always whisper in his ear about Duke … I just tell him that we’ve been friends together a long time, so I just joke with him about not making me feel bad.”

Whoever lands Randle is going to be very, very happy. He’s huge, but he handles the ball well in the open court and actually has a crossover that would make a guard proud. Of course, that all goes along with him being a wide body and a force inside. He’s a rare combination of strengths, and he made the dozens of college coaches on hand drool with his play on Thursday.

Randle will be a serious matchup problem for defenses, no matter where he heads. For Duke fans, think of Elton Brand with even more athleticism—a comparison that nearly made Randle blush on Thursday.

“He would bring a beast to our class,” Jones said. “I don’t think anybody can stop Julius. That would be a beast of a class if he was the only person in it. He’s just a one of a kind player. There’s really nobody who can stop him. He’s strong minded and he wills his way and gets it done. He doesn’t say anything negative, he just gets things done.”

Randle’s recruiting hasn’t been a stressful deal because he has a lot of good people around him helping to guide the process, including Jones.

“That’s my best friend,” Randle told Sporting News. “We’ve been through so much together since fifth grade, and for us to be here now in this situation, we’ve been very blessed to get this far. He’ll be my friend whether I go to Duke or not. That’s just a friendship you can’t break no matter what.”

Devin Booker, a consensus top 100 national recruit for the 2014 class, got a first-hand view of Randle on Thursday. His Alabama Challenge AAU team is also loaded with Division I prospects, but it hardly mattered as Randle and the Titans steamrolled Booker’s team.

“You don’t usually see somebody who is 6-9 and 240 (pounds) who can move like that and can handle the ball,” said Booker, a Mississippi native who has offers from Arkansas, Florida, Michigan and the in-state SEC schools, among others. “I have so much respect for him. He’s so powerful. He’s basically unstoppable, like a monster. At the LeBron camp one time I was guarding him and he used his body against me and pushed me out of the way with no problem. I was like ‘wow’. But he just acts like another one of us off the court.”